THE Mthwakazi Republic Party (MRP) has condemned the re-arrest of its member over an offence for which he served jail time, describing the action as shocking and deeply disturbing.
Welcome Moyo was one of nine prominent MRP members, widely known as the MRP9, who were arrested in March 2021 after staging a protest at Bulawayo Central Police Station.
The group gathered to demand the release of party leader Mqondisi Moyo following a raid at his home by State security agents.
The nine were subsequently convicted of public violence by Bulawayo magistrate Tavengwa Sangster in June 2022.
Seven members received 33-month prison terms each, while two, including Welcome, were sentenced to 36 months each.
During their incarceration, eight of the activists were transferred from Khami and Mlondolozi Prisons in Bulawayo to Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison in Harare under unclear circumstances, a move the party condemned as an attempt to isolate and intimidate them.
Moyo, the MRP president, said Welcome was arrested, convicted, imprisoned and served his full sentence for the offence.
“This is not justice,” Moyo said.
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“This is persecution, confusion and State cruelty rolled into one.”
He highlighted that his party members endured a horrific three-year imprisonment at Khami, Chikurubi and Harare Central prisons.
“He served that sentence under the custody of the Zimbabwean State.
“Yet today, the same State has turned around and treated him as though he never served it at all.”
According to Moyo, while the MRP9 members were already serving their sentences, their lawyers filed an appeal.
However, that appeal was never heard at the courts and was never cancelled or regularised.
Moyo said that was an unresolved procedural mess that appeared to had been twisted into a false claim that Welcome and the other MRP9 members somehow “ran away” or abandoned their sentences — when, in fact, they were in prison serving them.
“The court and State records appear to reflect a fiction that these men absconded, even though the Zimbabwean State itself had them in custody for three years,” Moyo said.
He indicated that this was a damning indictment of a justice system “so disorganised, so reckless and so hostile to truth that it can imprison a man, release him after sentence and later hunt him down as if he were a fugitive”.
Moyo was detained at Bulawayo Central Police Station and was set to appear in court today.
Efforts to get a comment from national police spokesperson Commissioner Paul Nyathi were unsuccessful.
MRP is a secessionist political organisation advocating for the restoration of an independent Mthwakazi state, separate from Zimbabwe.
The party has frequently clashed with State authorities over its calls for self-determination, which it says are rooted in decades of “systemic marginalisation and historical grievances”.
